I agree with everything you said, except for the thing about communists not believing in private property. I've been assured they do, they just believe everybody should have some.
I agree with you most heartily. This is a ridiculuous debate fostered by non-mathematicians, as I see it. Real mathematicians would rate Emmy Noether as one of the best, ever.
In the spring of 1915, Noether was invited to return to the University of Göttingen by David Hilbert and Felix Klein. Their effort to recruit her, however, was blocked by the philologists and historians among the philosophical faculty: women, they insisted, should not become privatdozent. One faculty member protested: "What will our soldiers think when they return to the university and find that they are required to learn at the feet of a woman?" Hilbert responded with indignation, stating, "I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as privatdozent. After all, we are a university, not a bath house."
I think there is a disconnect somewhere in how people think of these things. If someone breaks into a box of voting slips to show how easily it can be done, the person is punished for being a wise-ass because everybody knows how easy it is, really, to break into a voting box. The system actually runs on trust and the punishment is in place more or less as a token.
Somehow we are expecting electronic security to be better than paper security and social justice for electronic "escapades" (or smart-ass behavior) to be treated differently.
I am always amazed by the/. crowd's incredible willingness to come down hard on poor-boys-trying-to-make-it (artists) and completely ignore the reality of North American economics. To whit:
Why should anyone get a lifetime income for one thing they created?
I would like to say:
Why should anyone get a lifetime income because they are the one thing their parents created?
Go look it up sometime. Most wealth is born wealthy.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled, capitalist paradise.
I had contact in university back in the 70's in Canada with a witness to the use of fuel-air bombs. He was my friend's locker partner (yes, enrollment was heavy back then). He had come from Vietnam after the war. He told me about witnessing the effects of a "CBU" bomb. He claimed that all people and animals in a 10 kilometer radius were dead. People who died still had cigarettes in their mouths. The weapons carried by the dead were in pristine condition.
I didn't think about this again until I read a news report years later about the U.S. use of fuel-air bombs in Vietnam that was released under a Jimmy Carter initiative. The news report claimed a 3 kilometer radius.
By the way, my friend (still is) was a Vietnam vet who left the States because he couldn't stand the craziness of the war and the politics. I still find it amazing that he was randomly assigned to share a locker with Tan Lee.
Both were only interested in women, math, physics and a safer, better world.
I just needed to share this. I can't really say why.
The serious movies that you mentioned missed out on many old non-serious movies that were arguably higher in actual "hard" science but didn't do so well at the box office. Perhaps this had to do with their budgets and the difficulty of creating any effects that could come close to those imagined by just reading SF books.
Now that special effect CGI capability and availability have increased, maybe we will see more of these movies that have modern Jerry Lewis' as astronauts or Tony Randall's as aquanauts.
Or maybe we already have (Pluto Nash?) and the same economic laws apply, yet the movie industry would rather risk a break-even-at-worst scenario with no chance of great success than a lose-everything-at-worse scenario with unknown chances of success.
For what it's worth, I was a math undergrad at the University of Winnipeg when Tim Ball was teaching there. I had several friends who were geography majors who had him. At that time, he had a Master's and publicly stated that the push to have professors with Ph.D.s was ridiculous as he could just get a distance degree (by mail at the time -- pre-internet) and it would be just as good.
Because he was one of the first profs there to get into computing in geography in a big way, I got interested in his work. I was only 2 years into an undergraduate degree but I was unsure of his use of statistics and reasoning. He was sceptical of global cooling reported in the media at that time. The primary focus of his objection seemed to be that not enough research had been done and climate change has always been the norm. This seems to be the same argument he is using against global warming.
He liked to make sensational statements and, equally, he very much liked to attack sensational statements. At least, I found him like that. I would still read any of his works very carefully with a critical eye.
I am in the process of getting a Cdn. passport and the new rules mean that I must have at least one government-issued ID with a picture and my signature. In my province that means I have two choices: a driver's license or a Manitoba Liquor Control Comission card.
In other words, in order for my government to let me out of the country, I have to prove that I can drink, drive or, preferably, both.
Bicycle-driving teetotalers are definitely not seen as the kind of Canadians my government wants hanging out in the States.
Why is it that all these control devices focus on causing pain? What about pleasure? One of those Larry Niven geegaws would not only stop a rioter, it would pwn them for life!!
I can see the guy, laying on a couch:
"I tried to belt him and he made me come! Does that make me a fag? I am sooo confused."
I'm sorry, but I can't agree with ANY list of computer manuals. Those books are valuable for the reader, author and publishers for about 1 year.
I think that the most valuable texts to publish would be the Dover math texts, or other original scientific and mathematical texts. I'm not saying that high school/university texts that have had the ideas of luminaries polished by professional teachers are not valuable, quite the contrary, but I do believe that the original works by masters are the most valuable source for exceptional students who can pick up on subtle hints by the masters (viz. Grassman's algebra and Clifford and Hestenes).
I'm with you. Big explosions.
And I especially want the really creative, technical stuff; like Christopher Walken sneaking up on Tanya Roberts in a blimp (View to a Kill).
Yep, now THAT's technotainment!!!
When I was fishing a few eeks ago, I accidently sprayed DEET (mosquito repellent contained in Deep-Woods Off) on one of my glasses' lens, which is plastic. I immediately dunked it in the lake and put them back on. I thought I had lost a lense but then I saw that the DEET had removed all the scratches on that lens. I haven't tried it on the other lens yet, but I will certainly give it a shot once I have my new glasses. I'm thinking of trying it on my scratched CDs, too.
I think it is more likely that George Bush, noticing that the increase in Daylight Saving Time is having no effect on Global Warning, will immediately consider that an evil empire has been secretly experimenting with nuclear forces and will gear up for a preemptive invasion of the sun.
From the article:
Such a chip could store roughly 2,000 songs based on today's storage standards.
Is this the new metric for machine capacity? Whatever happened to the number of books that could be held in RAM?
I think that any list of open source should include Don Knuth's TeX and derivatives. I have no idea how to factor that into any economic discussion, but it must be a huge impact.
He doesn't seem to think that writing poor code is entirely the fault of coders though: he blames the education system.
and from the post on IBM's 60th birthday:
said Chris Murray, manager of nanoscale materials and devices. "I don't think we (the U.S.) are in a position at our current levels of investment in education to control or even have a strong influence on how innovation develops."
Is there some theme going on where the educational system is getting the blame?
Slashdot Mirror
Isaac Asimov's first sale was Marooned Off Vesta.
I, for one, would welcome having the mission commemorate him somehow.
I originally thought of the nixie tube.
It seems to be popular with hobbyists and collectors, but it's unlikely to be used as a work tool anymore.
You want your rocket back? Call the police!
I agree with everything you said, except for the thing about communists not believing in private property. I've been assured they do, they just believe everybody should have some.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmy_Noether
From the Wikipedia article:
In the spring of 1915, Noether was invited to return to the University of Göttingen by David Hilbert and Felix Klein. Their effort to recruit her, however, was blocked by the philologists and historians among the philosophical faculty: women, they insisted, should not become privatdozent. One faculty member protested: "What will our soldiers think when they return to the university and find that they are required to learn at the feet of a woman?" Hilbert responded with indignation, stating, "I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission as privatdozent. After all, we are a university, not a bath house."
Not to mention that SAS itself is written in C, an open-source programming language. Sheesh, I thought only my bosses spewed this bullshit.
LOTR IV: Bad Hobbits Die Hard?
Somehow we are expecting electronic security to be better than paper security and social justice for electronic "escapades" (or smart-ass behavior) to be treated differently.
I am always amazed by the /. crowd's incredible willingness to come down hard on poor-boys-trying-to-make-it (artists) and completely ignore the reality of North American economics. To whit:
Why should anyone get a lifetime income for one thing they created?I would like to say:
Why should anyone get a lifetime income because they are the one thing their parents created?Go look it up sometime. Most wealth is born wealthy.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled, capitalist paradise.
If $25,000,000,000 matches their definition of "good".
I had contact in university back in the 70's in Canada with a witness to the use of fuel-air bombs. He was my friend's locker partner (yes, enrollment was heavy back then). He had come from Vietnam after the war. He told me about witnessing the effects of a "CBU" bomb. He claimed that all people and animals in a 10 kilometer radius were dead. People who died still had cigarettes in their mouths. The weapons carried by the dead were in pristine condition.
I didn't think about this again until I read a news report years later about the U.S. use of fuel-air bombs in Vietnam that was released under a Jimmy Carter initiative. The news report claimed a 3 kilometer radius.
By the way, my friend (still is) was a Vietnam vet who left the States because he couldn't stand the craziness of the war and the politics. I still find it amazing that he was randomly assigned to share a locker with Tan Lee.
Both were only interested in women, math, physics and a safer, better world.
I just needed to share this. I can't really say why.
The serious movies that you mentioned missed out on many old non-serious movies that were arguably higher in actual "hard" science but didn't do so well at the box office. Perhaps this had to do with their budgets and the difficulty of creating any effects that could come close to those imagined by just reading SF books.
Now that special effect CGI capability and availability have increased, maybe we will see more of these movies that have modern Jerry Lewis' as astronauts or Tony Randall's as aquanauts.
Or maybe we already have (Pluto Nash?) and the same economic laws apply, yet the movie industry would rather risk a break-even-at-worst scenario with no chance of great success than a lose-everything-at-worse scenario with unknown chances of success.
Because he was one of the first profs there to get into computing in geography in a big way, I got interested in his work. I was only 2 years into an undergraduate degree but I was unsure of his use of statistics and reasoning. He was sceptical of global cooling reported in the media at that time. The primary focus of his objection seemed to be that not enough research had been done and climate change has always been the norm. This seems to be the same argument he is using against global warming.
He liked to make sensational statements and, equally, he very much liked to attack sensational statements. At least, I found him like that. I would still read any of his works very carefully with a critical eye.
I am in the process of getting a Cdn. passport and the new rules mean that I must have at least one government-issued ID with a picture and my signature. In my province that means I have two choices: a driver's license or a Manitoba Liquor Control Comission card.
In other words, in order for my government to let me out of the country, I have to prove that I can drink, drive or, preferably, both.
Bicycle-driving teetotalers are definitely not seen as the kind of Canadians my government wants hanging out in the States.
Why is it that all these control devices focus on causing pain? What about pleasure? One of those Larry Niven geegaws would not only stop a rioter, it would pwn them for life!!
I can see the guy, laying on a couch:
"I tried to belt him and he made me come! Does that make me a fag? I am sooo confused."
I'm sorry, but I can't agree with ANY list of computer manuals. Those books are valuable for the reader, author and publishers for about 1 year.
I think that the most valuable texts to publish would be the Dover math texts, or other original scientific and mathematical texts. I'm not saying that high school/university texts that have had the ideas of luminaries polished by professional teachers are not valuable, quite the contrary, but I do believe that the original works by masters are the most valuable source for exceptional students who can pick up on subtle hints by the masters (viz. Grassman's algebra and Clifford and Hestenes).
paperless office
three-day work week
house under water (although I have come close to this)
I'm with you. Big explosions. And I especially want the really creative, technical stuff; like Christopher Walken sneaking up on Tanya Roberts in a blimp (View to a Kill). Yep, now THAT's technotainment!!!
When I was fishing a few eeks ago, I accidently sprayed DEET (mosquito repellent contained in Deep-Woods Off) on one of my glasses' lens, which is plastic. I immediately dunked it in the lake and put them back on. I thought I had lost a lense but then I saw that the DEET had removed all the scratches on that lens. I haven't tried it on the other lens yet, but I will certainly give it a shot once I have my new glasses. I'm thinking of trying it on my scratched CDs, too.
I think it is more likely that George Bush, noticing that the increase in Daylight Saving Time is having no effect on Global Warning, will immediately consider that an evil empire has been secretly experimenting with nuclear forces and will gear up for a preemptive invasion of the sun.
From the article: Such a chip could store roughly 2,000 songs based on today's storage standards. Is this the new metric for machine capacity? Whatever happened to the number of books that could be held in RAM?
I think that any list of open source should include Don Knuth's TeX and derivatives. I have no idea how to factor that into any economic discussion, but it must be a huge impact.
He doesn't seem to think that writing poor code is entirely the fault of coders though: he blames the education system. and from the post on IBM's 60th birthday: said Chris Murray, manager of nanoscale materials and devices. "I don't think we (the U.S.) are in a position at our current levels of investment in education to control or even have a strong influence on how innovation develops." Is there some theme going on where the educational system is getting the blame?